


Day One - Tzeitl

by anotherusedpage



Series: Sunrise, sunset [1]
Category: Fiddler on the Roof
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 1, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-23
Updated: 2010-02-23
Packaged: 2017-10-07 12:19:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/65096
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anotherusedpage/pseuds/anotherusedpage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A tailor's future is a heavy burden to bear.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Day One - Tzeitl

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seekingferret](https://archiveofourown.org/users/seekingferret/gifts).



> A tripple-drabble. Art is hand drawn in brush-and-ink

Hers is a faith born in poverty. Custom and ritual scrimped, saved, and hoarded against the Russian winter. Two candles for Shabbat, two candles, lit against the darkness. Not so that the little tailor can stitch himself to blindness in the flickering light, but so that they can eat together, sing together, celebrate together, warmed by the waxy glow. A luxury made holy.

To deny themselves this joy would be to deny God, who commanded them to light the Sabbath candles, to drink the heady wine. The command is freedom. She revels in it. She understands that that which binds her and constrains her is also that which sets her free.

_We gave each other a pledge. _

Fragile words, binding words, releasing her from one fate and leaving her beholden to another. His face before her, by the sacred luxury of the candlelight. Her hands, cracked and aching from a lifetime's legacy of poverty and work – different in kind, now, from that which she knew in Russia, though not, perhaps, in cruelty.

All the wealth he has ever had, he carried with him from Russia. The skill of his hands, the goodness of his heart, and, most weighty of all, that miraculous machine of his, carried with him through the Russian winter, though at times she thought it would break both his back and his heart. She wrapped his hands against the cold; her own – less valuable – she worked to ruin.

A tailor's future is a heavy burden to bear.

She bears it with joy.

His bright thread runs through her life, fragile enough to be broken by human hands, stitching together a patchwork of promises.

She revels in it. The burden and luxury of life, created out of the remnants of childhood covenants, faithfully followed in a changing world.


End file.
